Twenty Blue Devils

'Oh, balls,” Maggie said disgustedly.

'People,” Nick admonished quietly. “We have company.'

But Nelson was just warming up. “Let me give you just one example—our account with Java Green Mountain. We owe them for four thousand pounds of beans, duly purchased at $12.45 a pound and due at the end of the month. That's $49,800.'

'Nelson...” Nick said a little less patiently.

'Only our friend Mr. Terui took it upon himself to ‘correct’ it for us. I suppose you could say he made only one teeny mistake, shifting the decimal point one little place to the left. But what would the result have been if I hadn't caught it? We would have sent Green Mountain a check for $4,980 and not the $49,800 we owe them.'

Nick burst out laughing. “Hey, I like the guy's approach. Maybe we should put him in charge of the books.'

Predictably, this failed to amuse either Nelson or Maggie.

'You don't want him to succeed,” Maggie said hotly. “Neither of you, not really. You just—'

Fortunately, one of the workers yelled “Chowtime!” from the cooking area at this point, whereupon everybody headed for the buffet table, most of them making a detour at the bar first. Gideon refreshed his Scotch, then helped himself to rice, string beans, and grilled mahimahi, surprising and perhaps offending the server by declining her offer to dress the fish with coconut milk hand-wrung from a clump of pulverized coconut wrapped in cheesecloth. Coconut milk was the one staple of the sweet, pleasantly bland Polynesian diet that Gideon could do entirely without. No doubt it would look pretty good if you were perishing of thirst on a desert island, but it was hardly something you'd use to spoil a two-inch-thick chunk of nicely seared mahimahi.

'Hey, Gideon,” Celine said as she resettled herself beside him with her plate, “why you think my hair's so thin?'

'Oh, it's not really that—'

'Sure, it is. You a scientist. Guess.'

'Well, it's hard to say. In a lot of people—'

'Tennis.'

Gideon studied his Scotch, “Tennis,” he said.

'That's right, tennis. Used to play all the time. Douglas Fairbanks teach me. Junior, not father. You looking at the number-one player, Papeete Racquet Club, 1948, ‘50, ‘51.'

'But how,” Gideon asked, intrigued now, “did tennis affect your hair?'

Celine laughed. She had tiny, rounded teeth, like little pearls. “Not tennis, God love you. Too many showers with lousy shampoo.” She shook her head ruefully. “Didn't have no Vidal Sassoon back then. Oh-oh, they at it again.'

This last was a reference to Maggie and Nelson, whose arena had now shifted to the French plans to renew nuclear testing, suspended since 1992, at Mururoa atoll, southwest of Tahiti. Nelson was all for them because of the economic benefits that a renewal of testing would bring.

'And what about the radiation?” Maggie wanted to know, having more than recovered her composure since the earlier dispute.

'Poppycock,” said Nelson. “Do you seriously think, for one moment, that the French government would put our lives at risk? Don't be ridiculous.'

Maggie looked pityingly at him. “Unbelievable,” she said through a mouthful of prawn.

Nelson waggled a finger at her. “Can you point, in all honesty, to a single verified illness from all the previous tests?” Nelson demanded. “Has a radioactive cloud ever once passed over Tahiti? Has it? Has it?'

Aside from a faint similarity in the set of their lips, Nelson was about as different from John as one brother could be from another. Where John was big and beefy, Nelson was compact, with small, feminine hands and feet; where John seemed to take up more space than his size strictly demanded, Nelson seemed to fill less; where John was generally easygoing but easy to ignite, Nelson seemed to operate at a constant, irritable simmer. And altogether unlike John, he appeared to be totally devoid of humor.

Add the finicky little mustache—two dainty, symmetrical, upturned commas—to everything else, and John's older brother put Gideon in mind of nothing so much as a pompous fussbudget of a hotel manager in morning coat and striped pants; the little man who postured and sniffed behind the reception desk (and said things like “poppycock” and “don't be ridiculous') in one old Hollywood comedy after another, only to end up being put inevitably in his place by a suave and impeccable Cary Grant, or David Niven, or Katharine Hepburn. Huff and puff as he might, there was simply something about Nelson that made it hard to take him seriously.

Even now, while his finger remained leveled magisterially at the space between Maggie's eyes, she continued to chew away at her prawn, unruffled. “If those tests are so safe...” she finally said when she was good and ready, then chewed some more.

'Yes,” an impatient Nelson prodded, “if those tests are so safe...?'

'...then why don't they blow them up over France?'

There was a splutter of laughter from Nick and the others. Nelson merely stared at Maggie. “If you're not going to be serious,” he said scornfully, “I don't see the point of discussing it any further.'

'Good!” Nick said, whacking the table. “It's about time “

'Besides,” Nelson went on, addressing the group at large, “there's something else we need to talk about.” He waited for the others to quiet down and listen, which they didn't. “We have a new offer from Superstar.'

That got their attention. A near-perceptible current sizzled around the table. Conversations stopped in mid- sentence. Forks were laid on plates. Faces that had been relaxed and open-countenanced a moment before, abruptly looked shifty and cunning. Gideon and John exchanged glances, both thinking the same thing: maybe the